Hertz is selling 20,000 used EVs due to high repair costs

The rental car company will replace them with gasoline-powered vehicles.

See full article...

 

[O/Siris]

I think the most important word in the story is "panacea."

I don't think that was ever a realistic expectation.

 

[O/Siris]

Well thats dumb. Id think with more accidents the insurance company would raise the cost of insurance and Hertz would pass that price on to the customer that chooses to take the insurance. Or was that a joke? IDK, my own car insurance has always covered if I rent a car so I dont take the renter insurance.

Do you pay $2/day for your insurance? As I recall, that's how it's charged. Per day of rental.

It's so profitable that, even if one type of auto gets higher claims, it still is steady income for them and for the underwriters.

 

[O/Siris]

When I bought my PEHV back in 2016, the biggest issue was getting used to the brakes. I have a C-Max Energi, and when I first hit the brakes I about went through the windshield. Are Teslas like that the first time you drive one?

Didn't feel so to me. I test drove a 2016 Model S about a month ago. Seemed normal to me. I don't recall for certain now, but I think regen was on.

 

[O/Siris]

But if you don't then Hertz isn't paying for the repair, anyway, right? If I don't buy the rental insurance (and I don't), then my insurance is responsible for the car.

Be sure to check your coverage before counting on that. I think it's Comprehensive that covers a rental, and many people remove that if their car is paid off.

Which could just as easily apply to Collision.

If you're car is paid off, and you're only paying for Liability, I'm pretty sure that does not cover a rental car. But not 100%.

 

[O/Siris]

Thankfully he ended up in computing where his complete lack of situational awareness wasn't a problem.

Yeah.... OY!

 

[O/Siris]

Same. I treat borrowed/rented cars better than my own since it’s not my property.

Maybe not better here, but no worse. But I do compare them to the vehicle I own, and can involve dealing with features or capabilities I'm not familiar with in the rental vehicle.

 

[O/Siris]

Not all BEVs are quick. You US posters are Tesla-centric.

I'd be interested to compare an EV rental fleet without Polestars or Teslas -- say one with the Renault Clio (ICEV) with the Renault Zoe, which has the same size & type of body. The top trim of the latest and quickest Zoe does 0-100 km/h in 9.5sec, the standard trim 11.4sec and earlier were >13sec. It was still the best selling BEV in Europe for about a decade.

Most BEVs sold on the planet don't have anywhere near a Tesla's acceleration.

And before people step in with "but it's cheap to provide a BEV with great acceleration", no it isn't.
It isn't just the cost of the motor: You need beefier power electronics (not cheap!), you need better cooling, better tires, better brakes.
Also, accelerating/decelerating strongly all the time will absolutely kill range and tire longevity, making for unhappy customers.

Renault Clio would sit in the rental lot just like Model 3's do now. The market for mini-hatches like that in the USA is.... niche, at best. ICE or XEV.

 

[O/Siris]

I know that. Even C-segment is considered too small for the US anymore (which is why VW stopped selling its most globally popular car, the Golf, there' except the GTI & R performance versions).
However. you're missing the point, which was that I bet it has nothing to do with the drivetrain inherently, only with Hertz's choice of bad fleet TCO cars like Teslas (not just Hertz: In the UK, the TCO per mile cost of a Model 3 is higher than that of a BMW 3-series, despite the high cost of fuel and BIK tax advantages, because of the very high maintenance and repair cost of Tesla's non-drivetrain systems and components).
For that, the location of the fleet is irrelevant. About half of Ars readership is from outside the US, please note.

But the story is about Hertz, a US rental company. Which is not a "you're wrong" argument. Just stating that I maintained the context of the story when I replied.

 

[O/Siris]

This story is US-based, and Hertz Global Holdings is indeed a US company. As the name implies though, the operations are global.

True, too. Again, though, the story wasn't about global operations. Just US rentals (or the rental fleet, to be a bit more precise).

 

[O/Siris]

Actually, the originally planned 100,000-vehicle purchase was supposed to be the worldwide number. I believe in practical terms, most ended up in the US and in Germany.

But the link to the EV's for sale is US-only.

Folks, I've twice acknowledged that Hertz is more than a US company, but maintain that the story's context is USA.

 

[O/Siris]

I consider myself somewhat of a DIY mechanic myself. "YouTube certified." Seriously, though. I've successfully done major surgery and revived multiple modern European cars when numerous shops told me it couldn't be done without full engine swaps (to the tune of $10-15K). I wanted to branch out to EVs since for a while there, you could find GREAT deals on clean examples with bad battery modules. I came up against a major impediment though... software and parts accessibility. There are some folks out there fighting the good fight for Right to Repair (like Rich Rebuilds and Louis Rossmann), BUT until then, we're kinda hosed to keep EVs running in the long term. We need our politicians to start backing us up on this front if we truly want to make used EVs a sustainable commodity. Better for the planet too!

That's an uphill climb, to put it mildly.

There's a bit of panic journalism going on related to EV battery fires.It's not so simple as to say journalists are drumming it up, but they're certainly giving it strong attention.

I imagine that'll be some friction against any right-to-repair movement.